No doubt Lawrence's novel SONS AND LOVERS (1913) reflects the author's own close relationship with his mother.
Crawford leaves little doubt that Eliot was close to his mother.
Crawford says, "In the early 1930s, a few years after his mother died, and at a time when he had grown familiar with psychoanalysis, Tom [Eliot] remarked to a small audience of American students that the treatment of 'mother-love' in D. H. Lawrence's FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS was 'better than all the psychoanalysts' had to say on the topic. Lawrence (one of whose conspicuous weaknesses,' according to Tom [Eliot], was that he 'gave his best to his mother') writes of how the middle-aged mother in particular can demand 'more love' from 'one who will "understand" her. And as often as not she turns to her son.' FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS saw such an engulfing situation as 'a dynamic spiritual incest, more dangerous than sensual incest, because it is more intangible and less instinctively repugnant.' Such circumstances produced 'introversion' in sons when 'Child and parent' were 'intensely linked in adult love-sympathy and love-will,' yet the child's developing sexuality, though roused by parental love, could not find adequate expression through the intense parent-child bond and so clashed against it. For Lawrence this state of affairs was bound up with the child's own shame and masturbation, its own cruel, secret sexual excitement and sexual curiosity . . . There is an aversion from the normal coition act. But the craving to feel, to see, to taste, to know, mentally in the head, this is insatiable'" (pages 64-65).
Crawford also says, "To suggest that every detail of Lawrence's argument should be read back into Tom's [Eliot's] relationship with his mother would be unfair" (page 65).
In a similar way it would be unfair for me to suggest here that every detail of Lawrence's argument should be read back into the psychological lives of all introverted male progressives and liberals today.
Nevertheless, I suspect that all men and women in Western culture today who want to identify with young Eliot's life experiences will have to reflect on their own past experiences not only with their mothers but also with their fathers. To be sure, their reflection today should not only examine concrete examples of parental behavior but also reflect on the cultural conditioning of their parents.
For understandable reasons, both Lawrence and Eliot refer to a son's relationship with his mother. But Jung challenges us to think beyond our specific mothers and consider the larger psychodynamics involving the mother archetype (and the father archetype as well).
As a thought experiment, we might consider Lawrence's statement about how "the craving to feel, to see, to taste, to know, mentally in the head, this is insatiable" with reference to the mother archetype in his psyche. The mother archetype in a man's psyche is the key to the feminine dimension in his psyche. The insatiable craving that Lawrence describes suggests that he is describing the source of his own insatiable compulsions and obsessions. The feminine dimension in a man's psyche can be a source of compulsions and obsessions as well as a source of enormous creativity. (Similarly, the masculine dimension in a man's psyche can also be a source of other obsessions and compulsions.)
As I say, the unconscious is the source of human creativity. For this reason, it is worthwhile for people today to undertake the inward turn to examining their own lives in connection with their mothers and fathers (or mother-figures and father-figures in their lives) as well as the archetypes their mothers and father embodied in their lives. According to Jung, symbolic incest involving archetypes actually represents a certain kind of inner growth and development. But of course symbolic incest involving archetypes in the psyche should not be confused with actual incest in the real world between two persons who are closely related to one another.
CONCLUSION
In any event, World War I was followed by World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and other wars.
Symbolically, the wounded Fisher King has not recovered. As a result, Western culture to this day is symbolically the waste land. Actually, being wounded is not necessarily tragic, provided that we have the resilience to work to recover from our wound inasmuch as it is possible for us to recover.
In the ancient Egyptian myth about Osiris, Isis, symbolizing the feminine dimension of the human psyche, reconstructs Osiris, except for one symbolic part, and brings him back to renewed life. In this way, Osiris rises to renewed life, even though he does so with a symbolic wound. So the wounded Fisher King in Eliot's poem might need to endure his symbolic wound, but rise to the renewed life symbolized by the month of April.
In any event, we in Western culture today still need to find saving guidance. Identifying with young T. S. Eliot can help us find the saving guidance as he struggled to express the depths of his psyche in "The Waste Land." But identifying with him in his inner struggle is not a panacea -- nor is it a substitute for engaging in our own inner struggles to express the depths of our psyches. Nevertheless, his life and struggles in his young years may serve as a useful example and perhaps as an objective correlative for our own inner struggles.
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